Mother Courage and Her Children in the Cats and Starlight Express. At

minutes yet requires a complete lighting at odds with the work in hand. Whether Mr one could see the point of Hall wanting to set change, plus another set of especially lavish Davies and the RSC feared that audiences the play with contemporary relevance, the costumes for the entire cast, one really does would feel cheated by too bare a stage I do mixture of three-piece suits and Roman begin to speculate on the quality and not know, but what I do know is that this robes, contemporary graffiti and military prudence of our National Theatre's absurdly over-elaborate treatment both uniforms, but reversions to swords, shields housekeeping. obscured the meaning of the play and in­ and loincloths for the actual fights seemed Shortly thereafter I was left with a very excusably wasted the resources of a both self-conscious and uncomfortable. But similar impression after seeing the Royal purportedly hard7pressed drama company. most uncomfortable of all was the posse of Shakespeare Company's revival of Brecht' s With the National's new production of about I 00 members of the audience roped in Mother Courage and her Children in the Cariolanus in the Olivier it was not the to serve as the crowd. With their scarves, Barbican Theatre. Not only is it possible to concept but the execution that was dis­ brief-cases and hand-bags, and the all-too­ mount this play on a stage bare of anything heartening. It was certainly good thinking obvious directions of the NT supers in save Mother Courage's cart - and a simple by Sir Peter Hall and John Bury to tum that charge of them, these wretched paying cart at that - that is also surely what theatre's awkward stage into an amphi­ customers, through no fault of their own, Brecht's whole philosophy of theatre theatre, but the effect was clumsily threw all credibility to the winds. demands. Of all his plays this one cries out achieved, with Bury's portico looking Both the National and the RSC might do for simple, unadorned presentation to get its disproportionately heavy and his amphi­ well to study the work of Philip Prowse, bleak message across. But none of that theatre seats looking much more like theatre under whose aegis the Glasgow Citizens inhibited the RSC where Howard Davies's properties than stone. Moreover although Company has so brightly flourished. His production had been blessed with what · appeared to be the left-overs and after­ thoughts from John Napier's designs for Cats and Starlight Express. At one end of a rather creaky central revolving axis was set a cute little gypsy caravan with detachable panels and doors, behind which lurked sticks of wurst in hung orderly rows, and from the roof of which poked a sweet little crooked chimney. Kitsch at one end was complemented by an elaborate and in­ decipherable contraption, apparently by Emmett out of Heath Robinson, at the other. In the centre of the axis was a yet more extraordinary Emmett-like structure, a species of weather vane atop a revolving wheel, which served no discernible pur­ pose. Lest one was insufficiently distracted by all this, the back of the stage was littered with musicians beneath the murky glare of arc-lights. As in Rough Crossing, David Hersey was in charge of lighting, and here, as there, he did a thoroughly expert job. Too expert in this case, for the stage was bathed in a soft, romantic glow that was once again The National Theatre's production of Rough Crossing adapted by Tom Stoppardfrom Molnar's comedy A Play at the Castle. Director Peter Wood, designer Carl Toms, lighting David Hersey and choreography David Toguri. Photograph 'Zoe Dominic.

Mother Courage - a new version by the RSC at the Barbican. Director: Howard Baron Ochs - one of the costume designs by Davies. Set design: John Napier. Costumes: Lindy Hemming. Lighting: David Maria Bjornson for Der Rosenkavalier. Hersey. Over elaborate treatment fails to convey Brecht 's bleak message. (photograph by Donald Southern) Photograph by Nobby Clark.

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